I participated to this conference in Trondheim, a very interesting and intense experience I shared with many people and friends. On the general topic of the conference (Making Reality Really Real) and its implications I have been working for years, and also in 2010 I delivered some lectures and participated to public events. It seems that these topics, which pivot around the meaning of “simulation” and “reality”, are raising a new interest due to the new technologies and emerging sciences. My paper (“The sensible reality between obviousness and uncertainty”) is published in the book of the proceedings [R. Ascott, E. Gangvik, M. Jahrmann (eds.), Making Reality Really Real – Consciousness Reframed XI, Trondheim, TEKS Publishing, 2010] and I also published it online in Noema.

For a taxonomy of the senses

Presenting this conference Roy Ascott writes:

“The status of our reality is uncertain. The solid objective world of our everyday experience is a representation of an oscillating immateriality that we recognise, at another level of resolution, as constituting quantum phenomena. It’s not that matter doesn’t matter anymore, so much perhaps as the idea that matter isn’t matter anymore. Can we not reasonably ask whether there is a reality beyond what quantum mechanics describes, even closer to the really real? If our material, everyday world depends on our consciousness, what existed in the world before human consciousness had evolved, and how will the world look if our consciousness evolves still further? For many who live largely online, cyberspace accommodates a vivid and consequential normality that renders the material world less relevant to their lives. Until recently, we adapted our sensibilities to fit into separate boxes, variously identified as real, virtual, spiritual, and so on, which we saw as being served by separate ontologies. That separation has now merged into a flowing continuity, in which telecommunications, computing, nano technology, bioengineering and pharmacology play significant roles. The binary opposition between real and virtual realities no longer holds, and the Western conception of the individual human brain creating its own isolated mind may be giving way to the recognition of a connected intelligence seeking fuller access to a primordial field of universal consciousness. What might be the role of the artist in all of this? Can a trans-disciplinary art practice contribute to strategies for making the real really real? (Roy Ascott, 2010)”

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About me

I am a scholar in the media studies and the relationships among arts, sciences, technology and culture. I have been professor at the Universities of Rome “La Sapienza”, Bologna, Florence, SUPSI – University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland, Urbino, and at the Fine Arts Academies of Carrara, NABA Milan, LABA Rimini and Quasar Rome. Currently I am a teacher at the Fine Arts Academy of Urbino and at the University of Udine (Dept. of Mathematics, Computer and Physics Sciences). From 2008 to 2013 I have been a supervisor, and from 2013 to 2018 I have been the Director of Studies of the T-Node Ph.D. Research Program of the Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth.
I have internationally published more than 350 texts, essays and papers in books, magazines and conference proceedings. I have organized exhibitions, symposia, managed projects and participated to conferences worldwide.
I published the books "Realtà del virtuale. Rappresentazioni tecnologiche, comunicazione, arte" (Reality of the virtual. Techno-representations, communication, art), 1993 (also as an eBook), on virtual technologies and the relationships between culture and sensorial representations;" Il corpo tecnologico. L’influenza delle tecnologie sul corpo e sulle sue facoltà" (The technological body. Technologies’ influence on the body and its faculties), 1994, on the impact of technologies on the human body; "Arte e tecnologie. Comunicazione estetica e tecnoscienze" (Art and technologies. Aesthetic communication and technosciences), 1996 (also as an eBook), about art, sciences and technologies. I co-curated the books "The New and History", 2018, about the relationships among the “new”, innovation, history and cultural heritage, as well as the proceedings of art*science/Leonardo 50, an International conference he co-organized; and "Arte e complessità" (Art and Complexity), 2018, about the art forms dealing with complexity.
In 1994 I founded and directed the first Italian online journal, "NetMagazine/MagNet", on the relationships between arts and technologies. In 2000 I started "Noema" (https://noemalab.eu), an online magazine and a series of projects about the interrelations and influences among culture, arts, sciences and technologies. Currently I am curating the three-year research project (2018-20) art*science - Art & Climate Change (https://artscience.online).